title: Smooth surfaces from bilinear patches: Discrete affine minimal surfaces.
abstract: Motivated by applications in freeform architecture, we study surfaces which are composed of smoothly joined bilinear patches. These surfaces turn out to be discrete versions of negatively curved affine minimal surfaces and share many properties with their classical smooth counterparts. We present computational design approaches and study special cases which should be interesting for the architectural application.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Diskrete Mathematik und Geometrie, Technische Universität Wien, Wiedner Hauptstr. 8-10/104, A-1040 Wien, Austria.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Käferböck
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pottmann
keywords: Affine minimal surface; Architectural geometry; Asymptotic net; Discrete differential geometry; Fabrication-aware design